The International Dreamers Club

Black women receive 0.4% of venture capital (VC) funding, 80% of black-owned businesses fail within the first 18 months, and 62% of black-owned businesses expressed the most difficult aspect of entrepreneurship related to the growth and expansion of their business was either implementing technology or marketing their products or services. A 2024 study revealed majority Black-owned businesses made up only about 3% of all U.S. firms that were classifiable by the race and ethnicity of their owners in 2021. These businesses accounted for just 1% of gross revenue from all classifiable companies that year and research shows there is an inverse relationship between Black entrepreneurship and juvenile arrests involving violence in larger U.S. cities in a study from 1990 to 2000. While Black entrepreneurship supports the functionality of healthy environments across global communities, the presence of African Americans in the urban economy is often not captured or overlooked. While Black Founders seek to learn or engage in creative and engineering processes involved in curating sustainable business activities, the opportunities and accessibility to these options decrease over time. As we mature into adulthood, there are little to no central spaces to openly share wisdom, learn best practices of business design through project-based experiences and community connection, or express creative engineering skills in organized, professional settings. Social spaces currently emerging in Black communities may provide networking opportunities for professionals, but often lack the automation of interconnectivity and knowledge transfer most attendees expect from their experience to support them in their next stages of business development. 

Another systematic obstacle to Black entrepreneurship that drives this data is the disconnect between the resources available to Black business owners and the wide audience of Black entrepreneurs who do not resonate with corporate spaces. There are countless numbers of undocumented Black entrepreneurs whose voices are going unrecorded due to the requirements for corporate entry to accessible information or opportunities for equity. These spaces can only record data accessible to them, and the lack of interconnectivity between these spaces and Black communities drives a wedge between technical and non-technical resource networks required for businesses to establish sustainable and equitable foundations. Inclusive and attainable asset ownership may be available, and perhaps utilized, but long-term sustainability within a business flow is still an unsolved problem in Black-owned establishments around the world. 

The Intl. Dreamers Club empowers Black-owned businesses by providing educational resources for them and their teams to identify and integrate emerging technology and automation (AI) within their systems when curating sustainable infrastructures. At The Spectral Theory, an innovation design incubator for Black entrepreneurs, we believe innovation education and technology immersion are the ultimate keys to establishing long-term economic prosperity and providing economic opportunities in any thriving society. Powered by Spectral, entrepreneurs of The Dreamers Club will be trained in high-level visualization skills to recognize all technological and human resources available to them. Through our unique coaching program, we consult, train, and mentor our Dreamers in business infrastructure design, technology integration, global innovation, and community communication to become the CTOs of their businesses and implement effective information flow and knowledge transfer across their networks. Through exposure to spaces like AI, IoT, and Data Analysis, their newly gained CTO mindset will support them in discovering, innovating, and automating their iterations of success with all known resource networks available to them and their team. Ultimately, the CTO viewpoint empowers more informed decisions around professional infrastructures set in place through CEO, CMO, and CFO roles to name a few. Through our patent-pending Innovative Infrastructures Design Programs, we educate in Global UX/UI Design Thinking to expedite required learning time for Black professionals, supporting them to pinpoint areas of improvement or innovation within all systems and demonstrate the effectiveness of community alignment for successful iterations of resource flows required during each stage in user experience. 

Our approach to the Global Economic Prosperity Challenge is intellectual and social wellness support directly for Black entrepreneurial communities, fostering sustainable business infrastructures through educational business development and innovation design resources. By engaging with visualization practices and innovation activities within non-corporate settings, the childlike curiosity of education can reemerge in professional spaces. As all successful business ideas originate in the mind, we believe the approach must directly acknowledge the intellectual, mental, and social balance required when supporting a dedicated entrepreneur in sustaining their business. Black entrepreneurship requires technological education and integration to support communities facing entrepreneurial obstacles disproportionately affecting their demographic. At the Spectral Theory, we believe the power to innovate the unseen lies within, and to improve the view we have of our internal system design, whether personally or professionally, we must support the direct incorporation of more efficient and long-lasting system implementations in our growing communities. 

Each entrepreneur in The Int’l Dreamers Club will gain clearer views of their business infrastructures and fully curate the User Experience/Interaction (UX/UI) involved in their business design, promoting a clearer, more interactive experience with members of their professional and personal communities. This intellectual and social training experience provides high-level views of all system components and flows required to curate a sustainable business, software, or product toward maximum global impact. To accomplish this initiative, we provide agency to the Founders and CEOs of Black-owned establishments to improve and lead in the creation of their own sustainable, automated businesses. This internal clarity of communication flow results in more time, capacity, and peace for Black entrepreneurs and the communities they serve on their journeys. 

Based on the principles of Network Science, when one highly connected person interacts with another person, each person’s professional network has the opportunity to exponentially increase. Accessibility to innovative business design resources is low for Black entrepreneurs no matter the continent. Digital interconnectivity may be increased, but the real-time relationships of Black-owned businesses and the educational, financial, and analytical resources required to sustain their establishments are at an all-time low. Although we may have social and educational experiences for Black entrepreneurs in established countries, identifying the direction and distribution of resources after interacting in these digital or in-person spaces is missing from many of their experiences. We provide the next step in long-term professional innovation and collaboration after these connections are created by educating Black entrepreneurs in identifying and integrating pivotal components to sustain their business infrastructures like emerging technology and automation (AI). These new levels of interconnectivity result in higher levels of increased proximity which require effective resources to expedite knowledge transfer across human users and the technologies they leverage. As tools like social platforms increase our connection, The Spectral Theory supports the CTO mindset of Black entrepreneurs to maximize knowledge and information transfer across their professional relationships. Our innovative solution to adult education exists in corporate and non-corporate settings, expanding the audience of entrepreneurship to all creatives and engineers who may see a disconnect between their professions.

As the Founder, CEO, and Software Engineer Lead at The Spectral Theory, I have spent my career and personal growth journey engaging with global innovators, witnessing a first-hand view of the internal and external system designs within engineering, education, entrepreneurship, and mental health environments. I have explored academic, corporate, and community-driven experiences with professional and personal colleagues along the way whom I’ve resonated with over the years. My experience in the educational realms of Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and International Engineering Education equips me with a global lens to personally support each entrepreneur we work with as we build our system’s foundation.

I also explored corporate and creative spaces from local, collegiate, and professional standpoints across 20+ US cities. Being a part of a large range of creative, engineering, culturally-driven, and globally aware communities, I hold the skills to amplify a collective voice across industries, demographics, and geographical barriers. Through the matriculation of various educational institutions, I have remained connected to the relationships forged in spaces like the halls of Carnegie Mellon University-Silicon Valley as fellow classmates and I practiced our presentations for our next Exponential Innovation lecture or reconnecting with old friends and fellow entrepreneurs on the vast, green lawn at Black Market Flea, a monthly marketplace of 200+ Black-owned businesses in Los Angeles, California. As an entrepreneurship collective of international innovators from and for Black communities, we help to directly amplify the voices, resources, and needs of the spaces we serve

• Founded not-for-profit innovation design incubator for Black entrepreneurs in May 2022

• Establishing sustainable systems and resource networks for Black entrepreneurial communities in North America and Africa

• Supporting the identification & integration of Emerging Technologies and Automation within any system design

• Managing a team of (4) (Branding Directors, Production Manager, Operations Manager)

• Hosted, Curriculum Developer, and Creative Director of (10) in-person and virtual innovation education workshops and events partnering with community leaders and Black-owned businesses in Atlanta, GA, Los Angeles, CA and San Diego, CA

• Editor-In-Chief of Recess Mag, Creative Engineering DIY Magazine for Entrepreneurs

• Formed an internal creative innovation design consulting agency providing digital branding design for technology startups

• Curated Alignment Workbook for Entrepreneurs with original data analysis on over 350+ customer discoveries over 3 years

• Software Engineer Lead for (2) community-driven mobile applications (3) web applications

I am applying to solve on behalf of my not-for-profit organization, The Spectral Theory – An Innovation Design Incubator for Black Entrepreneurs, to raise capital for our community-driven portfolio companies and the development of their sustainable business infrastructures. As a Black-owned startup, our mission is to provide mentorship and development opportunities to our Dreamers from experienced innovators in their communities. Ultimately, the guidance and assistance from MIT Solve will support a more sustainable approach to alleviating technical, financial, legal, and market barriers for ourselves and our Dreamers.

The Spectral Theory’s innovation lies within our unique methodological approach to the identification, integration, and roadmap curation of sustainable system development in any business, software, or product design. Through the application of creativity and engineering fundamentals, as well as, increased proximity to educational resources, Black professionals will experience higher probabilities of success in business sustainability and improve the socio-economic balance of Black entrepreneurial communities. 

The benefits of our patent-pending Sustainable Business Design Toolkit will directly empower Black entrepreneurs to identify and integrate emerging technologies and automation (AI) in their infrastructure, providing them with the tools and resources needed when curating sustainable businesses in Black entrepreneurial communities. Non-corporate spaces will welcome creatives and engineers of all kinds, increasing network interconnectivity, global awareness, and knowledge transfer across industries or demographical barriers. By implicitly providing Mental Health and Wellness tools for Black professionals, we equip innovators with conceptual awareness of technological systems within their business, fostering long-term sustainability. 

We aim to impact all UN Sustainable Development Goals, all at once, through the effective implementation and distribution of innovation education within Black entrepreneurial communities. By directly supporting community-driven Black-owned businesses, we will provide resources for exponential amounts of their community members around the world to learn and practice innovation individually or with one another. Each of our portfolio companies has equal potential to innovate in each of the areas addressed in the list of UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Spectral Theory has a mission to empower 11 Black-owned businesses in 11 international cities or more through innovation education and the integration of emerging technology or AI in their company infrastructures to demonstrate sustainable business development.

Our patent-pending Innovation Design Consultation Platform will be powered by AI and is the core technology that supports us in providing interconnective experiences for our entrepreneurs in The Int’l Dreamers Club. 

We are comprised of 11 part-time staff for The Intl. Dreamers Club, including Branding Directors, Production Managers, Operations Managers, and Team Officials for The Int'l Dreamers Club cohorts.

As the founder of The Spectral Theory, I have spent the last 3 years exhibiting active business efforts and 8 years pursuing Engineering Education to gain a foundation for the Innovation Design Research Center we are building. Our Tech-and-Wellness team joined in February 2024 for the launch of Recess Mag, a creative engineering DIY magazine for Black entrepreneurs. Their continued support has flowed into the launch of The Int'l Dreamers Club April 2024 and has made exponential shifts in our in-person and online presence.

The Int'l Dreamers Club is a collective of diverse business owners in metropolitan cities across the world creatively engineering community-driven solutions with global impact and long-term sustainability in mind. The unique combination of emerging technologies, resource automation, and information flow through a community can improve the connection Black entrepreneurs feel to innovation and the infrastructures they design. Our current team is comprised of Software Engineers, Chemical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, PhD recipients across all educational disciplines, Branding Directors, Production Managers, Autonomous Vehicle experts, 3D Designers, and more from all around the world to support the Black-owned businesses we consult with and provide mentorship for.

The Spectral Theory curates the development of sustainable business, software, and product designs for Black-owned businesses. The Int’l Dreamers Club is The Spectral Theory’s global economic prosperity initiatives in action, connecting innovators with financially supportive members of their community to directly fuel the iteration of financial flow within a business’ infrastructure. Through the alignment of impactful investors and community-driven Black-owned businesses, entrepreneurs can experience the benefits that come with all sides of sustainable business infrastructure development. 

The Int’l Dreamers Club is powered by The Spectral Theory, a not-for-profit innovation and software design consultation incubator, connecting and providing educational resources for Black entrepreneurial communities to interact and learn from one another in non-corporate spaces. By demonstrating how internal equity can be built into a business at any stage of development through the practice of iterative success within our own community-driven business, Black-owned creative and engineering startups can have access to the blueprints we design, fostering sustainable infrastructures, and curating effective communication flow within their companies.